


Seen through your eyes

by CractasticDispatches



Series: A collection of Xena drabbles [2]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 15:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2697635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CractasticDispatches/pseuds/CractasticDispatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She'll never admit to it, but sometimes Xena arrives late on purpose. Just to listen. To hear.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seen through your eyes

Gabrielle tells stories. At first Xena listened out of curiosity _(and because Gabrielle never listened to her when she said she wasn’t interested anyway)_ , but now she listens because she knows that they’re good. That Gabrielle is a good storyteller.

Xena never tells her, will never admit to it, but sometimes she arrives late on purpose. They don’t travel every moment together but always when they split up they make plans to meet somewhere a few days later, usually in an inn or a tavern. At first, Xena mostly arrives first; she’s faster on Argo than Gabrielle can be on foot and she doesn’t see the point in wasting time going slowly. But sometimes Gabrielle gets there ahead of her.

The first time it happens, Xena doesn’t mean for it to. Doesn’t particularly trust the village or its people to be safe for someone like Gabrielle. The girl is too friendly by half and never thinks before she just spits out the truth, whatever and however she sees it. Xena has no idea why she ever let someone so talkative come along with her or how Gabrielle ever manages to not get into fights — could curse herself sometimes for not just sending the girl home when she meant to — and so when she arrives and finds Gabrielle at the tavern already and surrounded by at least half a dozen burly looking men, she means to just go right in. March in and make her these days slightly-less-than-usual dramatic entrance and hopefully break up whatever trouble Gabrielle has managed to find before any actual damage gets done.

But the sound of her own name stops her.

Gabrielle is telling a story. _Her_ story. Of the baby they found and the king without a son. She tells the story well and before Xena knows it, she’s ducking around the side of the tavern so she can listen by the window without Gabrielle seeing her, because if she sees her, she might stop. And Xena wants to hear.

It becomes a habit after that. It shouldn’t, but it does. When she can, when there’s time and no trouble calling her quickly to Gabrielle’s side, she stops outside to listen. The stories aren’t all about her, of course, but many are. And sometimes Xena thinks Gabrielle doesn’t tell them quite right. Embellishes here or glosses over something there. Assumes a motive or a feeling on someone’s part _(on Xena’s part)_ that she can’t possibly know. Can’t possibly be sure of. But even though she knows that, knows that the stories are just that: stories, not truths she can believe in, somehow Xena can’t help but keep listening.

_(Because when Gabrielle tells those stories, for a moment Xena can almost believe it. Can almost pretend that they are real and that that is who she is.)_

And then there’s a day when she stops to listen, but it’s not Gabrielle telling the story. It’s someone else. One of the townsmen. And the story he tells is one she knows. And one she wishes Gabrielle never would.

She should leave. She knows she should. But Gabrielle can be unpredictably fierce, and foolishly loyal, and Xena can’t go until she knows the girl won’t start anything. So she stays and listens as the man tells — with none of Gabrielle’s gift, not that it matters — of her warlord days. Of an army led by a ruthless woman that ransacked towns and left men bleeding in the streets. Of a man who dared try to stand up to her, and the way she single-handedly cut through all of his guards to force his surrender.

_(And Xena remembers. Remembers the blood on her sword and the swagger in her step as she approached the cowering leader. The laughter in her voice as she taunted him with her victory.)_

And Gabrielle snorts. Tells him he’s telling it wrong. She knows the story too, and she knows the numbers better than he does, and the name of the man who tried to fight.

Xena doesn’t know why she’s so surprised. It’s one of the more common stories about her, especially in this area, it shouldn’t be so surprising that Gabrielle has heard it. But Xena can’t understand how Gabrielle can know that story — can know any of those stories — and still tell of Xena the way she does. As if she were someone amazing. Someone you could like. Could trust.

“And you travel with someone like that?”

And she really needs to go now. Needs to get out of here, gods, her mother warned her that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, why didn’t she listen? Because she can’t stand to hear Gabrielle’s answer. Can’t stand to hear the girl flounder and try to argue. Try to excuse what she was. What she is. And she could go in, she could. Should, even. Because that would put a stop to things and it’s unfair for her to leave, she knows it. To leave Gabrielle alone in there. Someone like Gabrielle should never have to defend someone like Xena.

But if she does, if she goes in, she’ll have to see the look on Gabrielle’s face. And she knows that, whatever it is — relief, fear, or even concern — she can’t bear to see that even more. So she braces her legs, which seem to have locked up on her, and tries to move. To go. To run only—

“Yes.”

And Xena freezes. Gabrielle’s voice is not angry. Not sharp or defensive or unsure. It’s calm. Utterly calm. Like she knew all along.

“Why?” And that’s the man again, confused and insistent. Sounding as thrown as Xena feels and she thinks she couldn’t move now even if her life depended on it.

For answer Gabrielle says, “You know, when I was little, there was a boy I used to know. He was from the next town over and sometimes his family came to do business. He was always mean to me. One time when I was eight, he chased my little sister and me up a tree. I thought I hated him.”

She pauses there, and one of the listening drinkers asks, “Well, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Gabrielle replies. “I didn’t see him for many years. And then one day I was out walking, and my sister fell and hurt her ankle. He was traveling to our village alone, a man now, and he stopped. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he knew who we were, and he wrapped Lila’s ankle with some of the cloth he was meant to sell and helped me get her home safely. Somewhere along the way, I realized who he was, and I was surprised. He was so kind. He was’t the boy I had known. He grew up, I suppose.

“But that’s what happens, you know,” she continues. “We live and we learn and we change. Who we are now isn’t the same as who we were five years ago, or even five minutes ago.”

“And you think that Xena, warrior princess, has changed?” comes the man’s voice again, snide and hard and Xena doesn’t even need to see his face to know it looks like, because his voice is the same as the one she hears so often in her own head.

But she shifts anyway. Peeks over the windowsill in time to see Gabrielle, sitting on a table and swinging her feet with an audience gathered all around her now, smile.

“Would you like me to tell you the story?” she asks. Heads nod and Gabrielle begins and Xena slides down the wall into a crouch, staring at nothing and listening as Gabrielle speaks, weaving an image of herself that she doesn’t know, barely even recognizes, and doesn’t know what to think.

It’s a long time before she can make herself move again. And even then, she does’t go inside. But when she does finally arrive, Argo at her back and a whole day later than she’d meant to, when she does finally go in and meet Gabrielle at the tavern, Gabrielle is still waiting. And when she introduces Xena to the people sitting with her, a couple of men and women from around the town, their eyes might be wary, but they don’t get up to leave either.


End file.
